Introduction

This draft preliminary report was prepared using data from 30 April 2020, which has 691 responses. Note that not all questions received a response, and some questions allow multiple responses. The figures show a computational analysis of the responses using reproducible quantitative methods on the survey responses.

Uses of the current ‘Principles of Archaeological Ethics’

Frequency of consutation of the Principles

Figure 1: Frequency of consutation of the Principles

Figure 2 shows the results for multiple response question “How have you used the SAA Principles of Ethics?”. The horizontal bar plot on the left side indicates the total number of responses for each option, either individually or in any combination with other options. The vertical bar plot on the right shows the number of responses for each option by the specific combination of one option with other options. This allows us to see what combinations of options are common in the responses.

How have you used the SAA Principles of Ethics?... (1373 selections in 691 responses)

Figure 2: How have you used the SAA Principles of Ethics?… (1373 selections in 691 responses)

Consulting other codes of ethics

Approximately 121 different organisations were named in responses to this question. Most of these were named less than five times. These include state and regional archaeological societies and associations (e.g. Texas, California, Arizona, Colorado, etc.), other disciplines (e.g. American Association of Geographers, American Geophysical Union, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology), and specialized documents such as FAIR and CARE. Reasons give for why these documents were consulted included for teaching and study (e.g graduate and undergraduate coursework students and instructors), and to resolve a dispute or investigate a grievance (especially related to the RPA).

Other organisations mentioned more than ten times in responses to the question 'Have you consulted any other codes of ethics?'

Figure 3: Other organisations mentioned more than ten times in responses to the question ‘Have you consulted any other codes of ethics?’

Feedback on the current nine “Principles of Archaeological Ethics”

The figure below summarizes responses about the current nine “Principles of Archaeological Ethics”. For each Principle, we asked “I feel that this principle and its description adequately applies to archaeological practice and its ethical challenges today.” Respondents could choose one of five options along a spectrum from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. Figure 4 shows the distribution of responses to each of those five options for each of the nine principles. We can quickly see that the principle about “Accountability” is the least applicable to current archaeological practice, with 9% of respondents. disagreeing.

Plot of responses to the individual Likert scale questions about the current nine Principles

Figure 4: Plot of responses to the individual Likert scale questions about the current nine Principles

General observations on the current nine Principles

Plot of responses to the Likert scale questions about general observations on the current nine Principles

Figure 5: Plot of responses to the Likert scale questions about general observations on the current nine Principles

Feedback on the future of ethics and the SAA

Responses to the question “What do you see as being the primary ethical concerns in the field today?”

We use a word cloud to visualize the most frequently used words in the responses. The network plot shows how frequently used words co-occur with each other. The topic plot shows a computational model of topics present in the responses. It indicates which topics are most abundant in the responses.

A topic model is a statistical analysis of text that assumes there are k topics present in all the responses (we have to choose this number in advance, we use methods to estimate it). It assumes that every unique word in the text has a certain probability that it will appear in each topic. Computing these probability distributions is an iterative process, so each time we run the code we get slightly different combinations of words in the topics. A ‘topic’ then, is a distribution of all the unique words in the text, and one topic is different from another topic by the probability distributions of the unique words. One word can have a high probability of appearing in multiple topics, that’s why we see some duplication of words in different topics in the bar plot. The highest probability words for each topic are shown in the bar plot. Some of our topics are a bit ‘noisy’, and not highly distinctive or easily interpretable, this might be improved with some further tuning. This probabilistic approach is an advantage over the methods used for frequency-based methods (such as the word cloud), which are simply based on counts on the unique words, and so only allows a word to have a single meaning.

Visualisation of responses to 'What do you see as being the primary ethical concerns in the field today?' A: Word cloud of free text responses. B: Network of co-occurrences of high-frequency words. C: Topic model output.

Figure 6: Visualisation of responses to ‘What do you see as being the primary ethical concerns in the field today?’ A: Word cloud of free text responses. B: Network of co-occurrences of high-frequency words. C: Topic model output.

Responses to the question “What type of ethical document(s) do you feel would best serve the SAA membership?”

What type of ethical document(s) do you feel wo... (1054 selections in 691 responses)

Figure 7: What type of ethical document(s) do you feel wo… (1054 selections in 691 responses)

Distribution of responses to the question 'What type of ethical document(s) do you feel would best serve the SAA membership?' by years worked in archaeology

Figure 8: Distribution of responses to the question ‘What type of ethical document(s) do you feel would best serve the SAA membership?’ by years worked in archaeology

Responses to the question “What should be the purpose of the SAA’s ethical document?”

Comparions of rankings of the options for the question 'What should be the purpose of the SAA's ethical document?' separated by the two most frequently represented workplaces. The differences are not significant (chi = 22, p = 0.553)

Figure 9: Comparions of rankings of the options for the question ‘What should be the purpose of the SAA’s ethical document?’ separated by the two most frequently represented workplaces. The differences are not significant (chi = 22, p = 0.553)

Responses to the question “Are there additional ethical issues that should be addressed by the Principles?”

Visualisation of responses to 'Are there additional ethical issues that should be addressed by the Principles?' A: Word cloud of free text responses. B: Network of co-occurrences of high-frequency words. C: Topic model output.

Figure 10: Visualisation of responses to ‘Are there additional ethical issues that should be addressed by the Principles?’ A: Word cloud of free text responses. B: Network of co-occurrences of high-frequency words. C: Topic model output.

Demographics of respondants